36 politely toward Dodo and waiting gal- lantly for her reply. "I am indeed. I love him. Terribly," })odo said, with her great, pale-eyed edrnestness. Henrietta coughed. "A perfectly atrocious dinner is awaIting us," she said. "I have my part-time maid here this evening. She was a short-order cook-for the White Tavern or some such place." At that mnment, a moon-faced co]- ored woman appeared and said, "O.K." T HEY went into the dining room and settled themselves under the Sully portrait of "Aunt :Mag Pierce" and the disc of hammered copper. Wil- lard had trouble with the wine bottle, but when the cork was at last extracted, he said, "The wine is not superb, thdt I grant you. But it is just good enough to resent being on the same program with the overdone lamb that is as sure to follow as the night the day." "Do you remember Helène, Mum- my's wonderful Swiss cook r " Dodo said wistfully. She was incorrigibly remI- niscent. The disposition came upon her with the regularity of a stutter. "I do remember her, dear, and a painful memor) it is, at the moment," Henrietta replied. DurIng the meal, Clarence observed Dodo-trained the heavy ammunition of his mind upon her, as if he were a general besieging an undefended shepherdess on her lonely hill. At the same time, he was careful to conceal the wild unruliness of his natural cu- riosity. Dodo was, he saw, of a savage invincibility and bitter composure. She lIved, waiting patiently and proudly, like an old deposed tribal chieftain in- dolently dreaming of a hopeless return to power and dignity. "I passed our old house recently," she said, accepting a second potato. "Can you imagine, the old red draperies-the velvet ones with gold braid-are still hanging, even after all these years! It's an awful thought-insulting, somehow. I felt, looking at those dingy curtains behind the smeared windows, as if some part of my past were still in the house, rottIng away. It's a rooming house, or so I gather from the looks of the place. Milk cartons on every wIndow ledge, miserable faces peering out of the windows, dirty, torn shades in the room that used to be mine. Do you remember the dressing table with the pink brocade skirt I was so fond of, Hennie?" Dodo coughed, reproaching .. - fate and adversity. Henrietta gave a melancholy sigh in honor of the old, THE, ACCOUNT ANT IN HIS ßA TH The accountant dried his Î1nperfect back i\.s he stood in the sinking water, "'In ten years' time I'll be dead as cork, No sooner, no later. "Numbers display more muscle every day; They multiply while I'm asleep. \Vhen I fall to pieces thev won't even see; They'll keep on addIng each other up. "1 know the numbers; each has a co] or- Twenty-three is olive green. Five's a comedian (all have characters), One is God, and eight's the Queen. "But I was never envious of numbers, Watching them replace each other; Like the gnm wolves, not one remembers His fading father. . "Passionless, lean, their armies march, In vade more ledgers, take more men alive, But they're not free to run or lurch Each to his private grave." Patches of water shrank inside the bath. Confident in the immortal numbers, He heard his wife's amazing laugh; "1 love her," he said as he pulled on his pajamas. -ADRIAN MITCHELL . decaying red brick mansion and the memory of gold service plates, four but- lers, and the little Babcocks, pale and fair and spoiled. "Let it all go! I couldn't care less' " Dodo suddenly exclaimed. "I miss hav- ing someone to wash out my underwear more than I miss our marble entrance hall. Money, not beauty, is what I mourn." To her, It waS more tedious to have to wash a coffee cup than to be forced to wear a tattered dinner dress. In these preferences Dodo showed a clear and terrifying grasp of reality. She understood that the dirty coffee cup rep- resented an effort. A frayed dress was simply itself. It did not ask anything of her except the nerve to wear it, and that nerve Dodo had in abundance. Clarence did not speak during this nostalgic moment. His silences were . ordinarilv well considered; there was a lurking, impressive withholding of ap- proval in them. He knew when to let other people worry for fear they might be making fools of themselves; wIth a deep and greedy sense of drama he could sit nodding attentively and send a chill of apprehen,;ion through the speaker. In this case, though, his silence was not malicious, for, in truth, Clarence found Dodo endlessly engaging. His sensibility, his scholarly discipline, his obstinacy- it was almost a form of genius the way he could bring all these to bear upon the thin, reddish woman sItting across from him. He felt, somehow, a vague but genuine sympathy with this frayed and yet luxurious person. Already he was busily informing his conscience that Dodo had an honesty, a candor, and a rigid simplicity of emotion that he found more elegant and admirable than Hen- rietta's cleverness. Dodo was certainly not smart, and she was not kind. She was profoundly incapable of that greatness of sacrifice or punty of feeling at whose throne Clarence worshipped and in w hose name he criticized and sighed over most of his acquaintances. But Clarence decided to find Dodo majes- tically produced, gloriously out of date, even historically significant. No, not